What is the Lean Game?

In this article, we will explain what is the Lean Game and what you can expect from it.

To learn how to host a simulation in practice, have a look at our Lean Game Instructor Guide.

Objectives

The goal of the Lean Game is to introduce and reinforce Lean and Six Sigma methods, for reducing waste and achieving operational excellence.

Participants can experience in practice how to improve the operations and the bottom line by applying Lean methodologies. Especially, they get introduced to the 7 types of waste ("TIMWOOD"):

Transportation of parts
Inventory / WIP
Motion of operators
Waiting
Over-Processing
Overproduction
Defects

The game can be used as part of a company's Lean training, to onboard new employees at a production site, or as part of an Operations Management or Industrial Engineering class.

The Lean Game is hosted on the same platform as the Beer Game, allowing you to easily manage game sessions and invite participants.

Game Scenario

Zensimu's Lean Game simulates a workshop, producing and delivering colored products to a client.

The products are sheets of paper on which colored dots are painted with various shapes and colors.

Players perform various roles in the production process. They can be :

Painting stations: add the painted colored dots, by clicking on the units. If a dot is not painted correctly (not well positioned, or not the right color/shape), the operation results in a defect.
Quality Control: it is similar to the Painting station, except it can remove the defectuous dots. You can also setup Quality Control to rework the units. It can then paint back a dot after having cleaned the wrong ones.

Watch the video below for more details on how to play our Lean Game simulation:

Results

Each game round is played for a limited duration (5 to 20 minutes), during which the players try to fulfill as many customer orders as possible.

At the end, a debriefing page appears with the results of the team playing this workshop :

Financial view (P&L) comparing the revenue vs. costs
Fill rate: how many of the customer orders were fulfilled on time and with no defect
Resources efficiency and Flow efficiency: which proportion of the time/activities was actually bringing value for the customer
Cycle time analysis to evaluate if the work was balanced between stations and compared with the Takt time
Average Work-In-Process inventories throughout the game
Quality performance and how many defects were

Playing several Rounds

A Lean Game session is usually played in several rounds, where some improvements will gradually be implemented.

Each round usually lasts between 5 and 20 minutes. It is a good idea to play for several shorter rounds instead of a unique long one, as it allows more time for players to reflect in-between each round.

For each game round, you can integrate some improvements in the game scenario, or allow participants to update these directly. The possible actions you can bring to the workshop are the following :

Workshop layout / Move stations
Reduce batch size (One-piece-flow)
Auto-inspect work (Jidoka)
Balance workload
Level production plan (Heijunka)
Add click guides (Poka Yoke)
Kanban
Reduce changeover times (SMED)